Former Wake Forest coach Dave Odom recalls Tim Duncan's humble roots

The odes began late Sunday night, interrupted only by Monday's grand theater between the U.S. and Ghana. And how richly deserved they were. The San Antonio Spurs' NBA championship, their dominance of the Miami Heat, commitment to team and reversal of last year's crushing disappointment represented the best of sports.

At the core of this basketball clinic — the ball movement and spacing were artistic and, dare I say, exquisite — was a stoic power forward from the U.S. Virgin Islands who once fancied himself a competitive swimmer.

At 38, Tim Duncan, no longer is the Spurs' best player. Tony Parker is. And Duncan was not the best player in the Finals. Kawhi Leonard was.

But Duncan, more specifically his leadership, was as essential to this fifth San Antonio title as to the first four. And it elevated him further in the ACC's basketball pantheon, closer to the unmatchable status of one Michael Jordan and above all others.

Duncan did not win a national title during his four seasons at Wake Forest. He did not reach a Final Four. But he led the Deacons to consecutive ACC championships — Bethel High graduate Tony Rutland was among his running mates — their first in 33 years, and began an enduring connection with then-Wake coach Dave Odom.

"What could you say bad about the guy?" Odom marveled Tuesday. "He's led a wonderful life, some would say a charmed life, but he's earned everything he's gotten. He's just a pleasure to be around, and he's living proof that good things do happen to good people who work hard to do the right thing and treat people the right way."

Odom confirmed my memory that Duncan was similarly grounded when he arrived in Winston-Salem from St. Croix.

"He was always that way, and I give total credit to his mom and his dad and the environment that he grew up in," Odom said. "And when you compare that to some of the environments that our youth today here in the continental United States grow up in from a basketball standpoint, it's no wonder that he's like he is today.

"His life was not contaminated with things that are not really important. He was taught early on to respect adults and his peers, listen to his teachers, learn from his coaches and that basketball's part of education and that you've got to learn something about it every day."

A two-time ACC player of the year, and the national honoree in 1997, Duncan's college career is not among the league's top five. The standards set by the likes of David Thompson, Ralph Sampson, Christian Laettner, Tyler Hansbrough and, yes, Jordan are too high.

But when you combine college and the NBA, and remove the peerless Jordan from the equation, Duncan now stands above the remainder of the ACC, and probably did before San Antonio's clinching victory Sunday.

James Worthy was Jordan's teammate on North Carolina's 1982 national championship team and was voted the Final Four's most outstanding player. He won three NBA titles with the Showtime Lakers, reached the Finals seven times and twice was named first-team All-NBA.

Billy Cunningham in 1965 was Dean Smith's first ACC player of the year at North Carolina and was the first to lead the conference in rebounding three consecutive seasons. He teamed with Wilt Chamberlain and Hal Greer to win the 1967 NBA title with the Philadelphia 76ers, ending the Boston Celtics' eight-year reign. Sixteen seasons later, Cunningham coached Julius Erving, Moses Malone and the Sixers to the championship.

Jordan, Worthy and Cunningham reside in the Basketball Hall of Fame, as do Thompson and Sampson, the latter's pro career derailed by injury after his time at Virginia. And Duncan will join them as soon as he's eligible — five years after retirement.

He's a two-time league MVP and three-time Finals MVP. He's played in 14 all-star games and earned first-team All-NBA recognition 10 times, second team three times. Together, Duncan and coach Gregg Popovich have been the foundation of a perennial contender for 17 years, and Duncan is the only player in history to start for NBA champions in three different decades.

Odom first learned of Duncan in 1992, when former Wake Forest forward Chris King returned to campus after a barnstorming tour of the Caribbean with other NBA draftees. King didn't know Duncan's name or hometown, only that he was long, lean and gifted.

Deacons assistant coach Larry Davis promptly mined his Caribbean connections for a name and phone number. Within a month, Odom was in St. Croix watching Duncan play on an outdoor court.

"When he got to me, he was totally committed to the game," Odom said. "He saw the game as very much like life, a learning experience every single day, and everything I threw him at him he soaked in almost like a Caribbean sponge. … He was one of those proverbial first-to-practice, last-to-leave guys, and then he comes in between to practice."

Odom remembers the conference call he had with Popovich and other San Antonio brass prior to the 1997 draft. Duncan's skills and potential were obvious, but the Spurs wanted to know what kind of person he was.

How did he respond to criticism and interact with teammates? What about his relationships with students and faculty? Did he work as hard on the practice court and in the weight room as when the TV lights shined?

"I promise you, every single question was answered positively," Odom said. "All the answers were what you would want to hear. … The more questions that were asked and the more positive answers I gave, the more silence on the other end I heard.

"It was almost silence, as in disbelief, and you can understand why, because they had David Robinson on their team, and they're saying, 'There ain't but one guy like that.' But I had another one, and they were getting ready to have another one."

Duncan and the revered Robinson, The Admiral, teamed for titles in 1999 and 2003, with Robinson exiting on top just prior to his 38th birthday. Odom and Duncan spoke Sunday and texted Monday, and retirement was not mentioned.

"We haven't talked about next year," Odom said. "He'll say, 'If I am better than anybody they can bring in, and I still enjoy the game, and I'm healthy enough to do it, why shouldn't I play again?

"I don't think he'll come back to try and win a sixth championship. If he comes back, he'll try and win a sixth championship, but that won't be the reason he comes back. He'll play because he loves the game and thinks he can help the Spurs."

Duncan dodged retirement questions during Sunday's postgame news conference, but he, Popovich and other San Antonio veterans never masked their devastation over losing last season's Finals to Miami. Less than 30 seconds from the title, San Antonio squandered a five-point lead in the last 29 seconds of regulation, fell by three in overtime and dropped Game 7 by seven.

All the Spurs did to salve that wound was post the NBA's best regular-season record at 62-20 and dismiss Dallas, Portland, Oklahoma City and Miami in the playoffs. And the longer the playoffs went, the better this alleged over-the-hill bunch performed.

"It very easily could have hit us in different ways, and we could have reacted in different ways," Duncan told reporters at the Finals. "But we reacted the right way. We got great leadership from the top in Pop, who came back absolutely fired up and ready to go, and to push us this far and this hard and to come out with the championship is amazing."

"I don't know that there's ever been a better coaching job in that league than what Gregg Popovich did this year," Odom said. "I don't know how you could have. Given the way last year ended and the mentality of people when they face the destruction they did last year after almost having the thing sealed. It was an amazing resurrection."

As admirable and refreshing: A young man worlds removed from the privileged American basketball culture morphing into a Hall of Famer.

When Duncan enrolled at Wake Forest in 1993, Bob Gibbons' blue-ink-on-white-paper newsletter was must-read for recruiting mavens, and his assessment of the Deacons' class went something like this:

They could have signed the best player in the world in some guy named Tim Duncan, but nobody would know because nobody's seen him play except Dave Odom.